Mosaic Study Guide

For Personal Reflection or Smaller Group Encounters
Week of 16 November 08

Our Common Practices
Worship
Learning
Compassion
Basin and Towel Service
Play
Hospitality

Questions for Everyone: Tell us a favorite thing about someone in your family.  Share one thing about yourself that few people know.  Of our six common practices which needs the most attention from our community? 

Our Text:
Matthew 6.19-34:¹⁹“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ²²“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; ²³but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! ²⁴“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. ²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

On Sunday Rob said something like: “None of  the language that some of us grew up hearing like ‘salvation’ and ‘hell’ and ‘sin’ and ‘grace’ and ‘peace’ and ‘church’ can be understood unless we first understand Jesus’ prayer for God’s kingdom to come on earth.  It is just that important.”

Questions: Do you agree?  What happens when we use words like salvation and hell out of the context of the Kingdom of God?  How is it that evangelicals seem to have moved away from Jesus’ central teaching about the kingdom of heaven?

Jesus offers a choice to his listeners, choose to serve God or mammon, choose to trust God or mammon, choose to live for God or mammon.  Mammon can be translated “wealth,” “property,” or “possessions.” 

Questions: Is this a fair choice?  Why is this so very difficult for us?

Perhaps there are no more ignored words in all of Scripture than Jesus’ invitation to not worry. 

Questions: Why is it so difficult for us not to worry?  What are you worrying about?  What are you tempted to worry about?  On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = I never worry and 10 = I worry all the time) where are you on the scale?

On Sunday, Rob said something like, “Living in the kingdom produces worry free living because living in the kingdom becomes an invitation to know the divine Monarch as our Father; a Father who loves us, a Father who has a purpose for us to fulfill, a Father who knows what we need before we ask him.  This way of seeing and thinking produces a worry-free life.”

Question: So what do you think about this comment? 

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